8 Spirituality Studies 11-1 Spring 2025 3 Seeing It as It Is or the Illuminative Vision The eye is not only the mystical symbol of a knowledge that has to be reached by correcting one’s representation of reality, it may also serve as measure of an adequate perception. Mystical traditions are replete with visionary experiences that offer glimpses into the beyond. While the visionary realm can be one of delusions and temptations, it may also provide a direct symbol of the spiritual perception of reality as it is, in its nakedness, to use Meister Eckhart’s image [4]. In this regard, the issue of spiritual vision and perception plays a central role in the spirituality of Islam as testified by the Qurʼā n itself in its evocation of the mystical journey of the Prophet. 3.1 The Prophet’s Vision of No-Vision By the star when it sets, your companion has neither strayed nor erred; nor does he speak out of caprice. It is naught but a revelation revealed, taught by him by one of awesome power. Possessed of vigor, he stood upright when he was upon the highest horizon. Then he drew nigh and came close, till he was within two bows length or nearer. Then He revealed to His servant what He revealed. The heart lied not in what it saw. Do you then dispute with him as to what he saw? And indeed, he saw him another time, at the lote tree of boundary, by which lies the Garden of the refuge, when there covered the lote tree that which covered. The gaze swerved not; nor did it transgress. Indeed, he saw the greatest of the signs of his Lord (Surah Al-Najm 1–18, quoted in Nasr 2015, 1290–1292). While images and visions do not play a central role in Islam, given the iconoclastic bent of a tradition focused on transcendence, this passage from the Qurʼā n provides a paradigm for spiritual insight as adequateness to the Divine object. The chapter of the Qurʼā n entitled “The Star” (Ar. an-Najm) narrates the Ascension of the Prophet Muhammad, the central mystical event of Islam, in addition to the nocturnal journey from Mecca to Jerusalem. In the early centuries of Islam, this mi’rāj served as a paradigm for Sufi mystical journeys (Al-Sulamī 2006; Sells 1995). In the first verses of the passage above the phonetic resonance between the Arabic words ghawā and hawā or “wandering” and “desire” – “your companion is not astray [Ar. ghawā], nor does he speak vainly [note: a result of his passion, hawā]” – may suggests the way Islam conceives of error. Spiritual wandering amounts to missing the mark of Divine Reality, as it were, because of individualistic and egotic assertion, hence lack of “surrender” (Ar. islām). Moreover, the passage emphasizes that the relation of the vision does not stem from the Prophet’s hawā, or from his “individual inclination”, but pertains on the contrary to revelation (Ar. wahyun yūhā), coming as it does from God. This is a crucial point since the inadequateness of perception results, from an Islamic point, from a lack of surrender to God’s all-powerful and omniscient Reality, a radical lack of sense of proportion that is predicated upon self-centered pride, in the image of the revolted angel Iblis [5]. An adequate perception of reality can only proceed from an obedient receptivity to wahy, or “revelation”. The brief narrative of the ascension that takes the Prophet at “two bows” length or nearer emphasizes, accordingly, the power of God to move the Prophet in his journey. The remaining distance, albeit short, has been often understood by commentators as highlighting the way in which Divine transcendence remains the core teaching of Islam, even when it comes to the highest manifestations of mystical experience (Coppens 2018; Sells 1995, 47–56). The human eye must remain at a distance from what it is given to contemplate; the gap between the servant and the Lord can never be totally filled. However, two further remarks are in order concerning the vision that ensues from the ascension. First, what is said of the object contemplated amounts to the most indeterminate of description: “and God revealed to his servant ‘what’ [Ar. mā] he revealed”. The Arabic mā does not tell us anything about the object of vision except that it is an object, thereby suggesting that the vision pertains to the unsayable. This led the Sufi Junayd to declare that on the night of the ascension, “the Prophet reached a limit for which there is neither expression nor description” (Al-Sulamī 2007, 60). Furthermore, this ineffability has been understood by Muslim mystics as a sign of the “perfect annihilation”, fanā‘, of the Prophet. The utter indetermination of the object of vision has not only been read as a “measure” of the incommensurability of God’s Reality and human limitations but also, and consequently, as a sign of the disappearance of human agency “because of his union with the one” as explained, for instance, by the 11–12th century Persian Sufi hagiographer ’Abd al-Rahmān al-Sulamī (Al-Sulamī 2007, 60). From the point of view of the human perception, the essence of the vision lies in that “the heart lied not in what it saw”. The matter is evidently not one of physical sight, but of spiritual vision of the heart. The verbal form kadhaba,
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